The Launch of the Wayne Valley Class of 67 Blog

Realizing that many of our classmates are on Facebook, I thought we needed a place for longer reflections than will fit in 400 characters. We all have stories to share about people and places and events that we remember that won't fit in a snippet designed for people with short attention spans. I wanted to have a place where folks could remember our common experiences and share their recollections at greater length.

Selfishly, I also realize from my experience with my wife's class of 1967, that there are a lot of folks (150 in our class alone) who are still not located. These are people that have managed to stay under the Internet radar and search engines and who have become hidden in plain sight. To locate these people, my new ambition, sometimes you have to rely on a random story or recollection or even unfounded rumor that just may provide that single clue that will lead to another classmate.

And we all have stories. Stories that deserve to be told again and again to anyone that will listen because they helped define who we were, and that is the foundation for who we have become, as a generation, a class, as individuals who have built fulfilling and busy lives.

For example. How we spent the money from the last magazine subscription drive in 1966. As I recall, the Christmas Dance was the Student Council's last Hurrah event that ate all that money. I remember painting stars on the walls of the gym above the bleachers. The paint matched the color of the walls until they were hit with UV lamps. Then they glowed like stars in the night. I remember a bandstand constructed using a basketball goal as a foundation, and fog machines that sprayed mineral oil and made everything a greasy mess later. But during the dance, it was a fog that concealed the gym floor markings and made the place look positively angelic. Between the round nightclub style tables, fog and the UV lights that lined the bleachers and illuminated the walls to reveal those stars, it was quite the sight. I often wondered how many years those stars remained unseen  before they were painted over in some routine maintenance painting of the gym. That single black and white photo in Embers somehow didn't quite capture the event quite as well as I remember it.

My copy of Embers is another story.

Now I have to figure out the best way to publicize this thing.

If anybody has stories of their own, please feel free to add them to this venue. I think it could be fun and a great build up to he 45th reunion.